Corning Shows Us a Future Made of Glass

Corning lately may be best known for their ultra-durable Gorilla Glass found on Apple products as well as other smartphones and computers, but it also has a historic and revered research and development arm that was responsible for the glass found in innovations that include the original Edison lightbulb and the first liquid crystal displays. Corning is also dedicated to supporting the life sciences industry: PYREX, for example, is a common glass found in today’s laboratories.

The 104-year old R&D research arm recently released a video of its glass-filled vision for the next 104 years. Some of the concepts presented are already in development, but one intriguing section in the middle of the video visualizes the use of Corning glass in the medical lab. We’ll start you off at the 3:07 mark and you’ll see glass used in futuristic, transparent medical terminals and tablets. You’ll also see glass (which is antimicrobial) used in a holographic examination table integrated with a cool-looking MRI scanner.

We may not see all of these concepts become reality, but it’s fun to envision the various ways that glass can be used:

Scott Jung (@scottjung) is a Silicon Valley-based medical and health technology journalist and advocate. He has been a guest contributor to Intel’s iQ e-magazine and Rock Health’s corporate blog and has provided live, on-site coverage of the International CES and Digital Health Summit, TEDMED, and Stanford Medicine X conference for Medgadget. Most recently, he has been appearing on TWiT.tv’s The New Screen Savers as a semi-regular medical and health technology correspondent.
Scott holds a B.S. degree in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Southern California.
Scott is always looking for the next big thing in medical technology and digital health. Interested in helping him transform lives? Get in touch with him at http://scottjung.net